


the Tillamook burn (what did you learn)

by theseourbodies



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Violence, Gen, Introspection, Post-Season/Series 02, Whump, restrained character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 13:00:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14356032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/theseourbodies
Summary: Being kidnapped provides Foggy with a surprising amount of time for thinking.He curses and calls and finally settles on a long, satisfying, wordless holler that makes his head pound and his body strain but calms his frantic brain just enough to realize thathey, this might not actually be the best idea.





	1. I.

**Author's Note:**

> First DD fic and honestly first time writing something this violent. If you want me to add any tags or warnings, please let me know.

I.   
Four months after he walks away from his best friend, after he lets Matt set fire to everything between them, and all but salt the damn earth behind him, Foggy jerks into consciousness with a pounding, throbbing headache and the nauseating sensation of vertigo. He throws his hands up, his brain screaming at him to stop himself from falling—but nothing happens. His arms are deadweights, and it takes him a long, panicking moment to realize that this is not because he's been paralyzed but because of the thick black rope wrapping him, elbow to wrist, to the sturdy, worn wood of an _extremely_ uncomfortable chair. The next wave of nausea that hits him has nothing to do with the sickening pain throbbing out from a spot just behind his ear. It's dark, but not dark enough to hide the fact that he's alone in a small room with no fucking windows and—he fights off the pain and cranes his head around behind him to check—one solid door with many very intimidating locks. He's tied to a chair in a room that stinks like must and wet, accompanied only by a few bundles of shapes covered in sheets and scattered around the walls. He's alone.

So, he does the totally logical thing and yells his fool head off. He curses and calls and finally settles on a long, satisfying, wordless holler that makes his head pound and his body strain but calms his frantic brain just enough to realize that _hey, this might not actually be the best idea._ He shuts his mouth with a snap, breathing heavily through his nose. He barely has a moment to settle when the first lock on the door snaps open, then the next, and the next until it swings wide. 

"You done screaming like a bitch?" A cool, disembodied voice asks, and Foggy straightens as much as he can, plucking up some idiot courage. 

"Sorry," he snaps, as best he can, considering it's like talking through raw, rough cotton, and he can feel his heart pounding in his throat. "Didn't realize there was kidnapee etiquette I was supposed to be observing here." 

The man who steps into the eerie, diffuse light is haggard-looking but neatly packaged—sallow, yellow skin, blood shot eyes, prickly heavy jowls hovering over a clean tan polo tucked into pressed black slacks. It's bizarrely intimidating, and Foggy can't help but shrink back. "Smart fucking tongue," the man intones. "You're lucky I need you talking, or I'd take care of that problem right now." 

Foggy gulps, but there is no way in hell he's letting this creepy bastard get the last word. "Thanks for that," he forces the words out shakily, "I was just thinking that this whole scenario lacked some incredibly horrific threats, that was really the icing on the cake, pal. You've really made the--" 

The room really isn't that big—in three even steps, the man's close enough to loom and Foggy can, _God,_ Foggy can smell him now. Dank and moldy and wet, just like this _motherfucking cell._ "Mr. Nelson," he cuts in, "trust me when I say it's in your best interest to keep your mouth shut until I tell you that I want you to speak." The man's flat expression finally shifts as he sneers, exposing yellow teeth that were flat and even, a row of tiny squared off stones. He reaches out one skinny, sallow hand to grab Foggy's exposed fingers and yank them vertical sharply until Foggy shouts. "I only need you to talk," he continues, "and you only need your stupid mouth to do that." He keeps pulling Foggy's fingers back until the resistance starts to feel terminal, until all Foggy can think about and feel is the pressure and the pain. His body leans back hard into the back of the chair, away from the pain, trying to relieve some of the pressure instinctively as his mind is blaring in terror because his _hands, good Christ, not his fucking hands._

"Get me?" 

Foggy barely registers the question, but when it finally penetrates he nods frantically, his lips pinched together tightly so nothing slips out. 

The man keeps him right up against the razor's edge of terrifying pain and then releases him abruptly. All the tension in Foggy's body snaps like a rubberband, and he sags forward. He gasps and gulps for air as quietly as he can, swallowing against a fresh wash of nausea and the stabbing, vicious pain in his head rushing back to the forefront of his awareness. He doesn't raise his head, but the man doesn't seem to mind where he is. Foggy has a split second to recognize the pull on his scalp as a fist in his hair, pulling, but not up, do-- 

His face meets one perfectly tailored knee and pain just smashes outward, nose, mouth, cheeks. Foggy's head snaps back so hard the chair rocks and he tips forward again frantically to keep from over-turning, fighting to keep breathing through the pain of it, eyes streaming, swallowing hard as the blood flowing back from his busted nose and the stinging cuts on the inside of his cheeks does its best to choke him. He gags at the sensation, keeps swallowing frantically until the taste is gone. Slickness tickles his lip and he licks instinctively—salt, copper, _blood,_ from his nose. 

Pain in his scalp again, hand still in his hair, and he flinches—he can't help it, can't stop the reaction and the small part of his brain still able to form higher thought hates that reaction and hates himself for not being able to control it better. But Foggy Nelson is a lawyer and generally a soft soul; he's seen his share of violence but not like this. This is nothing like a schoolyard fist fight or a bullet in the shoulder, and in the back of his mind he decides deliriously that he's going to give himself a fucking break. 

He's only one person. He's only Foggy Nelson, and Foggy Nelson has never been stoic about anything in his damn life. 

The man's talking, but it's like trying to listen to someone while you're underwater. It's white noise, and Foggy disregards it while he tries not to puke. But eventually the patterns line up and Foggy keeps hearing the same word, the same name, over and over; the man's asking the same question again and again, waiting for Foggy to come back to himself. 

_Who is Daredevil. Who is the Daredevil, what do you know about Daredevil, who is Daredevil._ Each time question comes with a tug on his scalp that hurts Foggy's whole head, his whole face, a tiny shock of pain that bounces through all the sore places in his body. He processes the words slowly and when he realizes what the man wants to know, all the fear and the pain just compress and _explode_ out of him as thick, hysterical laughter. The fucker wants to know about _Daredevil._ Foggy is bleeding, tied to a chair with his own blood in his mouth, because this bastard wants to know Matt's _name._

"Something funny, Mr. Nelson." The man doesn't even make it a question. The pain in Foggy's face is just a consistent ache now, throbbing along to the beat of his pulse and the persistent pain in his head. The rope around his arms pinches where he's thrashed against it and his body is sore in a bone-deep kind of way that he's never experienced before. This is just—the _best_ day. 

"'m I allowed to answer now?" Foggy wheezes, still giggling. The man blinks at him, basset hound face dropping lower as he frowns. He puts a hand on the back of the chair over Foggy's shoulder, which is surprisingly chummy until something that feels like a mallet but is probably just the guy's fist slams into Foggy's gut, stealing his breath and snapping his body forward in a way that his shoulders do not want to accommodate. Foggy's not laughing now, but the hysteria isn't going away—it tightens his throat even as he's desperately wheezing in breath, trying to convince his body that the hammer blow to his diaphragm hadn't actually collapsed his lungs. But mind over matter has always been Matt's bullshit, not his, and instead he's stuck gagging on air, eyes streaming, fighting his body for every breath he drags into his panicking body. 

The man gives him a hot second to regain some semblance of control before he's talking again. Foggy is a lover in almost all things, but he thinks that he completely and totally hates this guy. It's a minuscule comfort but focusing on glaring at the man's droopy awful face and beady, blood-shot eyes is the only thing keeping him from thinking about the inevitable conclusion of this utter disaster of a kidnapping plot. 

"I'm sure you've realized by now that we're getting desperate, Mr. Nelson," the man says candidly. He's not even breathing hard. "You were not our first choice of information sources. You're what we have, but fucking trust me when I say," he leans in close, too close, the stink of him and those blunt, yellow teeth filling Foggy's nose, his vision. "You're not going to be the last person we rip apart if you can't give us what I want." 

The pronoun switch pings something barely conscious in Foggy's mind, but he's barely cognizant of it over the terrible rushing in his ears. He's already made a decision, but if he hadn't before, this would have decided him. As desperate as this whole miserable situation is, Foggy knows that there's no way he's giving them anything about Matt, now. 

"I thought that might get your attention, Mr. Nelson. You've got that kind of attitude, that bleeding heart bullshit going on." 

Foggy lets him talk. He sinks into his own thoughts for a second of surprisingly cool relief. He's already resigned. Even if he hadn't loved (didn't love) the stupid bastard, it's not just Matt on the line if the wrong people know who he is. It's everyone that he cares about, as small as that list is, and frankly it's everyone who's ever cared about him—it's Karen and it's Claire and it's Foggy's fucking family, too, all the people that Matt had drawn to him just by being himself. Matt might have managed to alienate half of that list, but Foggy already knows enough about the man in front of him to know that that's not going to matter. This way, Karen's still in the crosshairs, but Foggy has to believe that even if she wasn't speaking to him Matt would still listen for her. Especially when-- 

Especially if there's a body for them to find, when the man finishes with Foggy here. 

So, he's resolved. He wishes it wasn't going to hurt as badly as he knows it will but dying for Matt Murdock's secrets probably isn't the worst way to go.


	2. II.

II.   
Shit like this isn't supposed to happen to Foggy, that was the whole point of breaking it off with Matt and Matt's insanely flawed system of compartmentalization. He was never supposed to be the guy that makes these kinds of choices, he thinks. Die, or let others die. A lose-lose situation.

Maybe Foggy could handle this better if he didn't hate to _fucking_ lose. 

Foggy doesn't realize that he's slipped from being 'lost in thought' to 'unconscious' until something smashes into his shin and he jolts back into consciousness with a shout. "Alright, fuck!" he hisses, kicking out his throbbing shin in an effort to shake the pain while his hands clenching into useless, painful fists. He glares blearily up at the man, barely able to focus. The man looks deeply unimpressed and _God,_ Foggy _hates him._

"Mr. Nelson—" Suddenly he stops, tilting his head minutely to the side. Foggy stares at him nervously for a second before he sees the clear, curling piece of wire disappearing into the man's ear, just a slight distortion in the way that the weak light hits him. 

_Can't give_ us _what_ I _need_ , Foggy thinks suddenly, and an uneasy theory starts to form in his mind. He doesn't want to know who these people are, though, he doesn't want to have to solve that problem when he's probably going to end up dying here anyway. If they're going to hurt him, he's not going to be their tool, too; he's not going to torture himself with a puzzle that no one but him is going to know he solved. 

The man turns and walks out of the room without ceremony and without a word. Stunned, Foggy takes the first deep breath he's managed since the man walked in and introduced Foggy's face to his kneecap. He slumps as much as he can, trying to ease the pressure on—well, on everything, because everything fucking hurts. Trying to breathe through his nose is a mistake that he only makes once, and then the only sound in the room is the shift of his clothing and the soft, shaking breaths he's taking through his mouth. 

It just makes the whole room seem even smaller, even more empty. When he catches himself straining to hear footsteps outside the door, just to know that the man hasn't forgotten he's here, Foggy shakes himself and forces himself to think of something else, think about anything else. No Stockholm for _this_ sad specimen, no _sir._

Unfortunately, with everything that he just can't think about, his thoughts keep circling back to one thing—to Matt, of course. For one wild moment, Foggy just wants to call for him, wants to whisper his name, or scream it; he doesn't know where he is, or how deep he is underground, or if he's underground at all. Matt had always been easy to speak into existence—when they had been younger, new to one another, before Foggy found out about his friend's particular skills, it had sometimes been eerie. People in general tended to subconsciously react to their names, but sometimes all Foggy had to do was mention Matt to someone and his friend would pop up out of nowhere. Foggy knows now that Matt's hearing really just had been that freakishly good, but he doesn't know why Matt had always come by when Foggy was talking about him. In the wake of—of everything, Foggy hadn't ever thought to ask. He wishes he had. There are a lot of things he wishes he'd asked, but he thinks that that might have been an answer he would have actually liked to have. 

Thinking about it, Foggy realizes that the pain in his face he's feeling is because his mouth is already pressed together on the _m_ of Matt's name. His hard-earned sense of paranoia chokes him off before he can follow through. He thinks about earpieces and the people who use them and how easy it would be to hide a camera, a speaker, _several_ cameras and speakers in the uncertain light of this tight, terrible room with its mysterious covered piles and pitch-black corners. He takes another shaky breath through his mouth instead. 

_Matt,_ he thinks to himself, _Matt, please._ It's... uncomfortably like praying, just thinking his former friend's name silently with his eyes cast up. He just can't stand to look at this room any more than he absolutely has to; the ceiling isn't much better, but at least it's almost black. He can get lost in it for a little while. Foggy doesn't let himself think about—daydream about—Matt coming to get him. He's not that desperate; he's not that foolish; and also he's barely able to hold onto a train of thought now, let alone an elaborate daydream. Pain is a constant grind in his body every time he moves or breathes, and it's exhausting. He fades in and out of consciousness as the pressure from his head and the throbbing in his face and gut set up a grinding, ebbing rhythm for—some amount of time. When he's mostly cognizant, he thinks Matt's name again and again; he doesn't want to know what it says about him, that this silent, useless calling is the only comfort he can seem to find here. If nothing else, the constant mantra is helping him avoid thinking at all; it's a small mercy, but he takes it all the same. 

He doesn't know how long he drifts. It takes a while, but Foggy finally becomes aware of other sounds beside the low, ragged breathing and the sounds of his own body shifting. Dull, irregular bass notes, short bursts and single notes, breathless pauses in between, like drunken Morse code. He can't make sense of it, but the notes get closer, and closer, and louder, and louder, and then it _is_ familiar. The sounds resolve into the boom and jutter of gunfire, and he knows what that sounds like, now, that's his life, now. 

Foggy's aching body finally catches up to the panic building into a wall of white noise in his brain-- his hands shake and he feels his breath come faster and faster until he's nearly hyperventilating, anxiety and adrenaline churning uselessly in his trapped body, blacking out pain until it's just a mounting pressure that eats at Foggy. He can barely breathe, let alone think— 

When the door slams open, he shouts wordlessly and flinches away, but nothing doing, _nothing fucking doing_ not with his arms wrapped tight-- 

The man slides out of the gaping black of the doorway and into the room. Foggy sees his hand come up, sees the gun. He hears it go off and clamps his eyes shut. 

Something spatters across his face, across his mouth, and he can't keep the mindless shout trapped in his mouth. He licks his lips instinctively, registers salt, copper, _blood_ again, and when he opens his eyes the man is a crumpled body on the floor. What's left of his head seeps blood. It takes a moment for his brain to connect the sight with the taste in his mouth but when it does his gorge rises, and he helplessly spits weak bile between his knees when it burns at the inside of his mouth. With a huge effort, he looks away from body on the floor and deeper into shadowed doorway, where another, darker shadow shifts forward. 

_Matt!_ Foggy's idiot brain tries to tell him, but that's not right, Matt doesn't use guns; for all his faults, he's never killed a man, let alone like this, from behind and with a gun. 

Matt doesn't use guns, but Foggy knows who does.

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up on [tumblr!](https://theseourbodies.tumblr.com/)


End file.
